HURT. THE BRAVE MOTHER WHO SAVED HER OWN LIFE.
WHEN Cerys Hurt's mother and grandmother died of breast cancer, she wanted to see her own children grow up. So she took the brave decision of having both her own healthy breasts removed in a bid to beat the disease in case she too had inherited their faulty gene. Doctors tried to persuade her not to have the operation as there was no sign of breast cancer developing and she was only 35. But she was adamant, and in May this year underwent the operation.
HARRISON. MY SON WAS GIVEN A DEATH SENTENCE AT XMAS.
'Your son has just eight weeks to live,' warned the doctor. I just couldn't take it in. It was three days after Christmas Day, and we had noticed some bruises down Jack's legs as we sat celebrating Christmas Day, but I had never imagined it could be anything so serious. But whilst other families were celebrating their Christmas's, I was being told my son had just eight weeks to live. It was devastating.
QUILTER. BRIDE SAVED FROM BREAST CANCER BY HER WEDDING DRESS.
WHEN Christina Quilter tried on her wedding dress she felt like a princess in the crystal corset and folds of white satin. But as she bent down to pick up the skirt, a searing pain shot through her right breast. The ribbed corset of the dress was digging into her, and she thought thats what had caused the pain. But as she stood up and adjusted the corset the pain got worse. The pain remained for the next two weeks, so she went to see her GP who referred her for a scan with a specialist. Tests revealed that the 27-year-old mother of three had breast cancer.
FAHY. MIRACLE BABY - AFTER A 20 YEAR WAIT.
I can always remember the day when my mum Jackie came back from hospital with my auntie Nikki. They sat me down in the living room at our house where me and mum lived together, just the two of us after she divorced my dad when I was very little. I could tell by their faces that it was something serious - but nothing prepared me for the bombshell that was about to be dropped on me. Mum told me that she had just been told by the doctors that she had breast cancer. Mum couldn't believe it herself - and I was shocked too. But mum was such a strong person, and I knew I had to keep it together for her too. I had to be strong just like her.
I got the call from the hospital to say a new pair of lungs had been found, but I couldn't get too excited. I'd already received five such calls in the two years that I had been on the transplant waiting list, and I knew that time was running out for me. My boyfriend Scott had asked me to marry him on my 21st birthday, when I'd just been told that I needed some new lungs, mine were giving up on me after being born with cystic fibrosis.
THIS is the baby whose parents had to prod her for TEN DAYS whilst she was critically ill in hospital to keep her alive. Tiny Chloe Lawrence was born four weeks premature and at just three weeks old was diagnosed with the killer bug meninigitis. Doctors didn't think she would survive and for ten days she stopped breathing so many times that her parents had to prod her dozens of time just to keep her alive.
'I think I'm going to have to cancel my whole wedding day,' I typed into the chatroom. I'd met eight girls on the wedding internet chat room site that I'd been on for months now, and we all chatted together online most days. Some of the girls were already married and had stayed on the chatroom site to help out other nervous brides. A couple of them, like me, were excitedly planning their big day and needed some advice and ideas. My husband William and I had been planning our wedding day for five months. We had met five years previously when we were set up on a blind date. William's brother was dating a friend of mine and they arranged for us to meet one evening at his house.
BURTON. PARALYSED GIRL DEFIES DOCS TO WALK AGAIN.
AS little Georgia Burton lay paralysed in her hospital bed, doctors warned her devastated parents that she may not even survived. Georgia, now 11, had contracted Guillain Barre Syndrome, a diseae of the nervous system that can be triggered just by something as mild as a sore throat or flu. In rare cases it can lead to total paralysis, which is what happened in Georgia's case. She lay in her hospital bed unable to move a muscle, and even unable to speak. Georgia was on a life support machine and doctors told her mother Kerry Burton that she may not survive. If she did recover, it could take upto five years for her to be able to walk again.


May 6, 2016 . 67 Songs That Prove 2001 Had The Best Party Music. Eve! Alien Ant . Thanks to P!NK (because that's how we spelled things in 2001), we had the timeless classic "Get the Party Started." . "Wherever You Will Go" by the Calling . Tagged: music, 2001, christina aguilera, mtv, nostalgia, pink, rewind Listen to 'Another Love' or 'Hold Me' or basically any/all of his songs. GET 16HOURS TRACK for BUSINESS. 3 HOURS Best Relaxing Romantic Music " Soothing Piano " Background for Meditation, Massage, Spa Enjoy Calm music for Relax, Study LMFAO - Party Rock Anthem ft. Valerius - Whenever - YouTube. Dec 7, 2012 Our expert panel counts down the year's top 10 noisemakers, and a got on the pop-culture front, musically, things couldn't have been better.
Dec 8, 2009 MTV News' James Montgomery picks his top 25 songs of the year in Bells, songs of sadness and beauty, tunes about getting loaded and getting revenge. song alone, Ms. Sebert seems like she'd be a fun girl to party. Apr 5, 2012 100 best songs of 2000 decade (MTV). By paris123 Here you are, the top 100 of the last decade according to MTV Get The Party Started. MTV Top 100 Hits of 2008 is the TV show that aired in December 2008 on channel MTVAsia. 74, Paramore · That's What You Get. 75, Nicole Scherzinger feat.


text:
<?php

namespace Omnipay\PayPal\Message;

use Omnipay\Tests\TestCase;
use Omnipay\PayPal\RestGateway;

class RestCreateSubscriptionRequestTest extends TestCase
{
    /** @var \Omnipay\PayPal\Message\RestCreateSubscriptionRequest */
    private $request;

    public function setUp()
    {
        $client = $this->getHttpClient();
        $request = $this->getHttpRequest();
        $this->request = new RestCreateSubscriptionRequest($client, $request);

        $this->request->initialize(array(
            'name'                  => 'Test Subscription',
            'description'           => 'Test Billing Subscription',
            'startDate'             => new \DateTime(),
            'planId'                => 'ABC-123',
            'payerDetails'          => array(
                'payment_method'    => 'paypal',
            ),
        ));
    }

    public function testGetData()
    {
        $data = $this->request->getData();
        $this->assertEquals('Test Subscription', $data['name']);
        $this->assertEquals('Test Billing Subscription', $data['description']);
        $this->assertEquals('ABC-123', $data['plan']['id']);
        $this->assertEquals('paypal', $data['payer']['payment_method']);
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Can We Stop The Surge Of Man-Made Earthquakes?
There's a whole lot more shaking going on in the Midwest lately—and humans are causing it.
| Published Dec 22, 2015 7:00 PM
Earthquakes across the eastern U.S. are associated with injection wells. Katie Peek / Popular Science / Source: M. Weingarten et al., Science, 19 June 2015
Earthquakes East Of the Rockies, 1973-2014.
In a recent study, published in Science, geophysicists analyzed earthquakes east of the Rockies and found a strong link to injection sites. Those colored in red were near active wells. Those in gray were not.
Mark Crismon and I were sitting outside his Oklahoma house, looking at the day lilies that lined his pond, when our conversation was interrupted by a distant boom. "Did you feel that?" Crismon asked. "Just be quiet. Sit still." He's a lanky 76-year-old, retired from an electronics career, with gray hair combed straight back from his ruddy face. The booms continued, once or twice per minute; I felt them under my skin. "That's a small earthquake," he said, seconds before the sound recurred. "There it was again. We'll go and look on the seismometer—I'll show you what it looks like."
We walked into his garage. It was July and approaching 100 degrees in the countryside north of Stillwater. The building was filled with freezers where Crismon and his wife store the food they grow, catch, shoot, and smoke. Deer and coyote tails covered corrugated-tin walls. On a desk in the corner, beside a hand-labeled bottle of peach brandy, sat a Dell laptop connected by a cable to a buried seismometer. Oklahoma State University scientists had given Crismon the seismometer in 2014, as part of a project to monitor the state's current rash of earthquakes.
He took a drag from his cigarette, then turned his attention to three parallel bars scrolling across the screen: blue on the bottom, red in the middle, green on top. They were mostly straight but had become jagged for the several minutes we had felt the tremors. "How'd you like to put up with that day and night?" he asked.
Earthquakes in Oklahoma
Mark Crismon monitors earthquake activity caused by injection wells at his home in Oklahoma, as part of a seismic network set up by scientists.
Crismon sits at this desk, on and off, for 14 hours a day. He arrives at six in the morning and takes pictures of the spikes with a digital camera to document what he calls a growing menace (even though the data gets recorded regardless). There's plenty to photograph: Oklahoma, which historically has had few earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or higher, started rumbling regularly in 2009. The Oklahoma Geological Survey recorded 35 such quakes in 2012, 109 in 2013, and 584 in 2014. (The prior annual average was fewer than two.) By late October, the 2015 figure had already exceeded 700.
Scientists have figured out the reason: the oil-and-gas industry's practice of injecting wastewater deep underground.
The granite basement that underlies the continent, a mile below Oklahoma's wheat and alfalfa fields, is full of faults. Usually, natural stresses clamp the rocks and keep them from moving—like "a vise that's slammed on the east and west side, and someone's turning the screw," says Todd Halihan, a hydrogeophysicist at Oklahoma State University. Inject fluid deep enough, he says, and it travels into the fractures in the granite, in effect lubricating the rock and causing faults to slip.
Halihan compares this to tabletop air hockey. "When it's off, the puck doesn't move particularly well," he says. "Turn on the air, and it's like you're injecting. That puck moves real well."
It's not only in Oklahoma where we're giving the proverbial puck more room to slide. Our species, unintentionally, keeps finding new ways to unleash earthquakes. We have rattled the ground by impounding reservoirs, excavating mines, testing nuclear weapons, tapping geothermal power, and pushing carbon dioxide underground to slow global warming.
Sometimes these quakes arrive as jolts like those Crismon and I felt outside his house. Sometimes they topple buildings and claim lives. Whether they hit the Midwest, California, Switzerland, India, or China, some of those who feel the shocks are asking: Can we control the tremors, or are damaging quakes an inevitable feature of the future?
We first recognized the problem of man-made earthquakes around the turn of the 20th century, as they began hitting the regions around South Africa's gold mines and Europe's coal mines. The release of gravitational energy, when the rock above the mines sagged, triggered them.
It took until the 1930s for Americans to notice man-made quakes beneath our own soil. When engineers created Lake Mead behind the Hoover Dam, the sudden addition of 12 billion tons of water apparently set off hundreds of small tremors along the Arizona-Nevada border.
"This was an 'aha moment,' an important benchmark in the science," says Bill Ellsworth, an emeritus seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and geophysics professor at Stanford University. Since then, reservoirs have been linked to devastating quakes around the world: definitively to a magnitude-6.3 quake that killed 200 people in 1967 near India's Koyna Dam, and more speculatively to the 2008 Sichuan quake, a magnitude-7.9 colossus that flattened schools and hospitals in China, and left more than 80,000 people dead or missing. The Sichuan quake was triggered less than 6 miles from the Zipingpu Dam reservoir, says natural-hazards researcher Christian Klose, who has linked water levels there to tremor frequency.
The most ominous precursor to Oklahoma came in the 1960s, when a series of earthquakes walloped the normally quiet Denver area. During two particularly lively days in 1962, the shocks broke windows, cracked plaster, and left electrical outlets hanging by wires. "Children cried with fright," read a federal field report from Dupont, a town just north of the city.
Oil-and-gas operations produce wastewater made up largely of brine. Injection wells in the U.S. pump 2 billion gallons of it a day underground.
Scientists traced this seismic uptick to the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, an Army facility that manufactured chemical weapons and rocket fuel. Weeks before the trembling began, the arsenal had started injecting wastewater 2 miles down into the crystalline basement rock. After the injections stopped, in 1966, it took a year for the shaking to cease: A magnitude-5.3 quake knocked bricks from chimneys in 1967 and caused more than $1 million in damage.
A geologist named David Evans found an association between the amount of fluid injected at the arsenal and the number of earthquakes, and suggested cause and effect. (To demonstrate how lubricated rocks slip, Evans reportedly would perform the "Coors experiment": He perforated the bottom of a beer can, and then showed how the seeping liquid eased its slide down an incline.) The Army disputed Evans' hypothesis, but he was vindicated by USGS researchers, who triggered seismicity soon after by methodically injecting fluid into Colorado's Rangely oil field.
Since then, scientists have grown more sophisticated about documenting changes in earthquake activity. About 200 miles south of Rangely, in Colorado's Paradox Valley, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has been injecting briny groundwater into a deep limestone formation in order to keep it from contaminating a river. "Somebody had the foresight to say, 'Let's see what kind of seismicity's out there before we start injecting,'" says bureau geophysicist Lisa Block. Six years of baseline data showed almost no natural activity. By contrast, the agency has recorded 6,200 quakes, most of them small, since underground disposal began in 1991.
By the time Oklahoma starting ramping up its own wastewater injection—now more than a billion barrels a year—the notion that humans can induce earthquakes by putting fluid underground was already familiar. Still, Sooner State residents were caught off-guard when that geologic principle hit home.
Th e Surge in Shaking
A decade ago, this part of North America experienced just 14 tremors a year. In 2014, 650 quakes hit the area, most of them clustered around wastewater injection wells.
Both maps show tremors stronger than magnitude 3.0. Color represents strength; dots mark centers. The map omits a few quakes along the west of New Mexico and Colorado, to avoid earthquake-prone mountain regions. Source: U.S. Geological Survey National Earthquake Information Center Data visualization by Pitch Interactive
Todd Halihan was standing in the hallway of his Stillwater home one night in November 2011 when he noticed glasses starting to rattle. As the building shook, the hydrogeophysicist flashed on his sleeping 6-year-old. "Should I get my kid out of bed and run out of the house?" he recalls thinking. "Should I get him under a table?"
Halihan was feeling the effects of a magnitude-5.7 quake—Oklahoma's largest, it turns out. Its center was near Prague (rhymes with "vague"), almost 50 miles away, where it buckled a highway and destroyed 14 homes. In one living room, rock from a fireplace and chimney struck a woman as she watched TV. The earthquake also toppled a historic turret at St. Gregory's University in nearby Shawnee. A team from the University of Oklahoma, Columbia University, and USGS determined the source: a fault rupture that began about 650 feet from active injection wells.
"That's when a lot more people started paying attention," says Austin Holland, Oklahoma's state seismologist until this past summer.
The idea that the oil-and-gas industry could be producing these quakes was a touchy subject, both for companies and for the administration of Gov. Mary Fallin. One study shows the industry has created one-fourth of Oklahoma's new jobs since 2010. Emails obtained by the EnergyWire news service paint a picture of a government that, in the words of Fallin chief of staff Denise Northrup, tried to "make this go away." Shortly after the Prague earthquake, Fallin aides contacted Devon Energy, an oil-and-gas producer, and obtained talking points to use with constituents. Among them: "There is no current evidence that oil-and-gas operations had anything to do with the recent large earthquakes in Oklahoma." When Fallin addressed a National Governors Association forum on shale-energy development in 2013, a reference to underground injection wells was deleted from her speech. "We had other issues we wanted to highlight," says Alex Weintz, Fallin's communications director until this past November.
Weintz says Fallin's personal views were always more nuanced than Devon Energy's talking points, even if those points were used by her staff. Her own reticence to blame disposal wells, he says, reflected the state of the research when she took office in 2011. "It was only the beginning of a spike in seismic activity," he says. "Since then, the science has evolved."
Even the Oklahoma Geological Survey, a university-affiliated state agency, was slow to acknowledge the disposal-well connection. In a 2013 statement, it noted that the Prague earthquake appeared to be the result of "natural causes." Holland, who worked for the survey, says, "Oil-and-gas is a very important industry, and so . . . some of the public statements saw a lot of wordsmithing."
As scientists dug into data, a consensus emerged that fluid injection was indeed behind the spike in earthquake activity. Even Fallin has come around. "We all know now there is a direct correlation between the increase of earthquakes that we've seen in Oklahoma and the disposal wells," she said at an August meeting of her administration's Coordinating Council on Seismic Activity.
In fact, new research shows earthquakes now pose a risk to the oil- and-gas industry itself. The largest crude-oil storage facility in the world sits in Cushing, Oklahoma, right above a fault recently activated by injection. Continued injection could produce a magnitude-5.7 earthquake, large enough to rupture oil tanks and pipelines.
The problem doesn't stop at Oklahoma's borders; man-made earthquakes have hit other midcontinent states too. On New Year's Eve 2011, a magnitude-4.0 tremor in Youngstown, Ohio, shook buildings and led to the shutdown of a disposal well that was deemed the likely culprit. Waste injection has also been linked to quakes in Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, and Texas.
"Oil-and-gas is a very important industry, and so . . . some of the public statements saw a lot of wordsmithing."
If the same quakes had happened overseas, they might have caused far more damage. "The technologies that have been pioneered primarily in the U.S.—to unlock gas from tight shale and to produce oil from unconventional reservoirs—have the potential to be applied around the world," says Ellsworth, the USGS seismologist. "Many countries will find it irresistible to produce their own resources. Unfortunately, in many of these countries, the building standards are not what they are in the United States, and the potential for severe damage and loss of life is really high."
As we keep using the earth as a vault to stash our waste—and as a tappable resource—we're creating a global-energy system that will likely increase the risk of small and potentially large earthquakes. Engineers will need to weigh every resource, looking at how much power it provides, how green it is, and what type of seismic risk it poses.
In some cases, the technologies we've engineered to ease our impact on the environment have proved likely to shake the ground. In a pilot project in Decatur, Illinois, carbon dioxide captured from an ethanol plant is being injected, in liquidlike form, almost 7,000 feet down into a sandstone formation. The goal is to slow climate change by keeping the greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere (a tactic also advanced by proponents of "clean coal").
So far, the injections have caused only the smallest of tremors, too faint to be felt. But Stanford University geophysicist Mark Zoback and hydrogeologist Steven Gorelick have argued that for underground carbon storage to benefit the climate, it must happen at a "massive scale"—one that will likely trigger more seismicity, and therefore potentially defeat its own purpose by discharging the carbon into the atmosphere. "Even small to moderate earthquakes threaten the seal integrity of a CO2 repository," they wrote in a 2012 journal article. For that reason, they concluded, carbon injection will be "an extremely expensive and risky strategy" to reduce greenhouse gases.
Ole Kaven—a USGS geophysicist involved in the Illinois project—says that if researchers can map faults, fractures, and fluid pathways using sophisticated instruments, they can reduce the hazard, though not eliminate it entirely. "If one factors in the cost of greenhouse-gas emissions, and what effect CO2 sequestration can have on reducing some of the long-term effects, this conversation changes," he says. "Some of these risks might be tolerated."
Hydrogeophysicist Todd Halihan says it might not take much pressure to increase seismicity—as little as 15 pounds per square inch. "Half of a car tire," he says.
That's a critical point: A technology might produce earthquakes, but what harm might come from not using it? Take geothermal production, a reliable and underused source of electricity that causes little environmental damage. "If we could tap all the heat in the earth, we wouldn't need anything else," says Ernest Majer, a geophysicist affiliated with both the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories.
That was no comfort in Basel, Switzerland, where in December 2006 operators of the Deep Heat Mining project began injecting cold water into the naturally hot granite below the city. The following week, a magnitude-3.4 shock rattled windows and cracked plaster. Injection was halted. A government study projected a 15 percent chance of a man-made earthquake causing more than $500 million in damage if production resumed. In 2009 the project was scrapped entirely.
Geothermal production continues in rural areas—most notably at the Geysers, north of California's Bay Area, where locals have routinely endured minor quake damage. "Sometimes it feels like a big truck just bumped into the house," says Jeff Gospe, who sits on a seismic-monitoring advisory committee there. Neighbors have reported cracked windows and a retaining wall that crushed a van.
Majer believes that the hazard posed by geothermal fields is minor compared with their potential to produce clean energy. (He says the Geysers alone could power all of San Francisco.) "There's no such thing as zero risk," Majer says. "Driving to the grocery store is a risk. Everybody risks when they get out of bed in the morning." Compare that, he says, with the cost of carbon emissions: "If you start looking at the health impacts, the climate impacts—all the nasty things coming out of the fossil-fuel economy—well, maybe we better do something else. Induced seismicity associated with putting carbon into the ground, associated with geothermal: Those are minor, minor things compared with all these other risks facing us."
Assuming we're not going to shut down energy production, scientists now face a more complex question: whether it's possible to minimize the hazard.
After the experiments in Colorado's Rangely oil field in the 1960s and '70s, which showed that we could control induced seismicity by varying the pressure of injected fluid, scientists were bursting with hope. Not only might they reduce damage from man-made quakes, the thinking went, but maybe they could control natural ones. Rather than waiting for the next bridge-toppler to hit California, USGS scientists suggested drilling wells along the San Andreas Fault, injecting water, and releasing the accumulated stress in a series of small, harmless quakes.
The idea never got traction. Not only would it take thousands of mini quakes to offset a major one, but it is also too risky. More than a century has passed since San Francisco's deadly 1906 quake, which means the city is sitting on highly stressed rock. Inject water underground, says Oklahoma's Halihan, and "you might not release 100,000 small ones. You might release a big one." Even if the experiment did work locally, he says, "you might set off the next segment of the fault. It's 3D and it's complicated: 'Hey, we didn't cause an earthquake in San Francisco.' 'Well, you just knocked down LA.' 'Sorry.' "
Today, nobody's talking about setting off microtremors in Oklahoma in order to avoid the next Prague earthquake. But scientists are talking about more-modest ways to manage seismicity.
"The toolbox is growing," says Austin Holland, who now works for USGS in New Mexico. It includes avoiding known faults, scaling back the volume and rate of fluid injected into the rock, injecting at a shallower depth, improving monitoring, and preparing to abandon wells altogether if seismicity can't be stopped. This past year, the Oklahoma Corporation Commission—which regulates the industry—ordered volume reductions for some wells, as well as "plug backs" to limit how deep some wastewater is injected. The state's "traffic light" system, instituted in 2013, allows regulators to scale back or halt drilling in response to seismic activity.
A truck carrying wastewater dumps it into a storage facility in Oklahoma before it is re-injected into the ground.
Still, eight magnitude-3 and -4 quakes struck northern Oklahoma during a 24-hour period as this story went to press. There's a lot we haven't yet learned about what happens underground—and that knowledge gap stymies us from managing the earthquakes we do create.
"Probably the greatest unknowns are the properties and processes deep within the earth, things that are very difficult to measure directly," Holland says. "How is pressure being communicated? Do faults act as seals or as conduits? What are the actual stress states deep within the earth? That's where science has to spend a significant amount of effort and resources."
Back in Stillwater, Todd Halihan understands both sides. He wants his students to find work in the energy industry when they graduate. But he also doesn't want to have to dive for his son the next time an earthquake shakes his house.
"We're going to make some decisions, and none of them are going to be super-simple or super-pleasant," he says. Ideally, that means talking levelheadedly about both the value of oil-and-gas production and the threat of earthquakes—how to balance those competing concerns and how much uncertainty we're willing to tolerate.
It's not easy to talk, though, when the ground is rattling. Each side retreats into a corner. Some industry and political leaders refuse to acknowledge the emerging science. Some quake-zone residents, feeling ignored and outgunned, pull out the only weapon they have: their rhetoric. The conversations grow polarized rather than solution-oriented.
Technology, Halihan says, often carries harm. "The Titanic's a nice example," he says. "We were developing big ships, and we sank them. Developed airplanes; we crashed them." Addressing unintended consequences doesn't necessarily mean scrapping innovations. Nor does it mean pretending the consequences don't exist.
With seismicity, as with addiction, the first step is admitting we have a problem that's not fully within our control. "The government, as well as these companies, should be upfront," says Leonardo Seeber, an earthquake geologist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "You want to drive your car. It takes gasoline. To produce that, you have to make wells. You have to pump in here and pump out there. And when you are doing that," he says, "you are changing the stress in the subsurface. Sometimes there could be earthquakes that we can't predict. There could be consequences. But we're all in it together."
This article was originally published in the January/February 2016 issue of Popular Science, under the title "Earthquake Nation"
The Case for Human-Caused Earthquakes, in Charts
Do injection wells really cause earthquakes?
Yes. In the early 1960s, an area near Denver experienced a cluster of 710 earthquakes. The tremors started a month after the Rocky Mountain Arsenal installed an injection well to dispose of waste from chemical-weapons manufacturing. Before 1960, the most recent earthquake in the region had been in 1882. Careful statistical analysis confirmed a trend obvious to even a casual observer: Large volumes of liquid, shot deep into the earth, can cause the ground to shake.
Are the recent quakes throughout the U.S. also caused by injection?
Almost certainly. In a recent study, published in Science, geophysicists analyzed earthquakes east of the Rockies and found a strong link to injection sites. Since 2011, 87 percent of tremors stronger than magnitude 3.0 have occurred within 15 miles of an active well.
…and it's not just in Oklahoma
Earthquakes across the eastern U.S. are associated with injection wells.
Can oil and gas companies prevent future earthquakes?
Probably. The authors of the Science study analyzed more than 7,000 earthquakes and nearly 20,000 wells to identify the practices most likely to be responsible. They found high injection rate was the biggest culprit, at least for saltwater wells. (Such wells inject brine into fresh ground, as opposed to enhanced oil recovery wells, which inject it into oil or gas fields in order to extract fuel.) Injection rate mattered more than well depth or total fluid volume. It's a logical conclusion: Injecting fluid rapidly gives it less time to diffuse, which may raise the pressure that pushes rocks apart at a fault line. But many high injection rate wells operate in states such as Michigan without creating earthquakes, so the structure of the ground is a factor too.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


, "44 percent of American adults have either switched religious affiliation, moved from being unaffiliated with any religion to being affiliated with a particular faith, or dropped any connection to a specific religious tradition altogether." Modern Americans are grappling with how to fit centuries-old faith-based traditions into a world filled with contradictions.
The Calling, a documentary produced by Danny Alpert and the Kindling Group, and screening at the Rice Media Center on December 15, is the story of seven idealistic young Americans on the path to becoming the spiritual leaders of tomorrow. The film follows each individual through years of study and training and into their individual practices as religious professionals, providing an unblinking look at modern Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and Muslim traditions and the struggles faced by those called to lead the "I'll have my cake and eat it too" generation of Americans. "We set out to create an American film about faith," Alpert says.
The Kindling Group launched "What's Your Calling," a companion engagement campaign, at the beginning of this month. The project, set to run through Spring 2011, features a series of interviews, videos and articles pushing the notion of "a calling" beyond the scope of religion.
Previous films of executive producer Daniel Alpert have been nominated for Academy and national Emmy Awards, and have aired on PBS, HBO, A&E and on television and at festivals around the world. The Kindling Group is a nonprofit organization with a mission of creating enlightening, innovative and engaging documentary films and promoting the civic and educational impact of such films. In addition to the Rice Cinema screening, The Calling will air nationally on the Emmy® and Peabody Award winning PBS series Independent Lens, on Monday, December 20, and Tuesday, December 21, from 9 to 11 p.m. (check local listings).
The Calling screens Wednesday, December 15, 7pm, at Rice Media Center.


text:
Oireachtas
2nd Level Hub
Heritage & Habitat
China Cables
Terror attacks
'Vain, reckless, belligerent': What unites Donald Trump and Kaiser Wilhelm II
US president shares many of the traits of the man who led Germany into war, says historian
Thu, Oct 26, 2017, 14:25
Ronan McGreevy
Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany.
President Donald Trump. Photograph: AP Photo/Evan Vucci
One of the foremost historians on the first World War war has compared US President Donald Trump to Kaiser Wilhelm II.
Professor Margaret MacMillan, the author of the bestselling book The War That Ended Peace, said Mr Trump shares many of the character traits of the Kaiser who led Germany into the first World War.
She describe those traits as giving the impression of being "reckless, inconsistent and belligerent".
Professor MacMillan, Professor of International History at the University of Oxford, is giving a lecture in Trinity College Dublin (TCD) on Thursday on how individuals as opposed to great movements can change the course of history.
She believes Mr Trump could change the course of world history and not in a good way.
"He has done something to the US which will take a long time, if ever, to recover from," she states.
"In foreign policy he has damaged the position of the United States in the world tremendously. He has made the world a more unstable place.
"As a Canadian, we are all aware of American faults, but it kept stability in the world, but we are moving into a much more multipolar world. We are living through turbulent times."
The presence of Mr Trump on the world stage, she believes, increases the chances of a seemingly minor event changing the course of history as happened when the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serbian nationalist in June 1914 precipitated the first World War seven weeks later.
"The role of accident and mistake in human history is always there. It is always a present danger. Events can come out of a clear blue sky," she said.
'Vain military admirer'
"Trump, rather like Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, is vain and has to be the centre of attention. They both admire the military tremendously. There are a lot of parallels.
"Nuclear weapons have kept World War III from happening since 1945 and that gives the most reckless pause."
Professor MacMillan will give the annual Edmund Burke Lecture on Thursday evening entitled "Sometimes it Matters Who is in Power".
She will examine what is sometimes called "The Great Man or Great Woman" theory of history where it is individuals rather than movements which shape events.
"Let us ask what would have happened if Hitler had died in trenches in the First World War or Winston Churchill had been killed when he was knocked down by a car in New York in 1931," explains Professor MacMillan.
"History is shaped by great currents such as economic and social changes but historians continue to disagree over whether individuals, whether leaders or thinkers, also make a difference.
"Individuals do not make history on their own but sometimes an individual and the times meet to produce change. It can be argued that the Reformation would have taken a different course without Martin Luther or that the Russian Revolution might not have led to Soviet communism without Lenin and Stalin."
The public talk is hosted by Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute and takes place at the Edmund Burke Theatre starting at 6.30pm.
Margaret Macmillan
Professor Macmillan
Trinity Long
Wilhelm Kaiser
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The BBC has issued a cautious welcome to the Scottish Government's "vision" for the corporation to operate under a new decentralised structure that transfers commissioning, editorial and budget decisions directly to Scotland – but pointed to 20 per cent budget cuts already earmarked at the organisation.
Plans for the future of a decentralisatised BBC and publicly-funded, public service broadcasting in Scotland have been laid out by the Scottish Government.
Its policy report calls for more "representative content" for Scottish audiences and builds on the view of Holyrood's education and culture committee, which just days ago said that BBC Scotland should be given power over commissioning programmes and budgets, warning of a "London bias" towards broadcasting.
The measure could be implemented either through the current BBC Charter renewal process, or separately, the government said.
A separate six o'clock news programme covering the world from a Scottish perspective has also been highlighted as a key policy proposal.
"In Scotland where there is devolved control of health and education policies, and elements of taxation it is critical that editorial control for coverage of these issues at a national and UK level is exercised in Scotland to maintain the BBC's reputation for high-quality and accurate coverage," said the report, adding that "a more comprehensive approach to news with a greater voice for Scottish journalists on Scottish issues" and "international stories for the Scottish network cannot now be resisted".
The vision has been welcomed by the Scottish Greens who have long stated they believe a "double lock" of Holyrood and Westminster oversight would provide security against any future cuts to the broadcaster.
Zara Kitson, culture spokeswoman for the Scottish Greens, said: "The editorial independence of the BBC is paramount but the current lack of accountability to the Scottish Parliament must be corrected.
The BBC receives about £3.7 billion every year from the TV licence fee, with approximately £323 million collected in Scotland.
Culture secretary Fiona Hyslop said that with full control of the money raised in Scotland through the licence fee, BBC Scotland could deliver up to an additional £100m of investment in Scotland's creative sector over the course of a year, which she said would support an extra 1,500 jobs and contribute up to an additional £60m to Scotland's economy.
However, a spokesman for the BBC said the corporation "welcomed" the debate, but pointed to budget cuts.
He said: "Audiences across Scotland get excellent value from the BBC, and are some of the highest users of our services. We welcome the Scottish Government's contribution to the Charter Review debate and look forward to further discussions with them about how to provide the best possible service to Scottish licence fee payers.
Ms Hyslop said that a new charter would "more accurately reflect Scottish issues and interests".
She said: "The vision I have set out today is founded on a recognition of the immense value of a public service broadcaster," she said.
"The BBC is one of the most important and influential cultural, social, economic and democratic institutions in our country, but audience satisfaction ratings show Scots do not feel the corporation fully represents their views and interests.
The report asked that the BBC provide the same levels of in-house programming to BBC Alba as it does to Welsh language channel S4C. The BBC supplies 520 hours to S4C with a value of £20m, compared to 230 to BBC Alba, valued at £5m.
The report welcomed the recent appointment of a head of news in Scotland at the BBC, but added that there needs to be a "more fundamental consideration" of how it ensures that national news is able to cover stories from within Scotland.
A federalised BBC with a semi-autonomous Scottish board should be created to hold BBC Scotland to account and should itself be accountable to the Scottish Parliament, it said. It also wants more support for Scottish independent producers to take their content to the global market.


cash or kind towards the enhancement of livestock production in secondary schools. Teachers of agricultural education should be made to attend seminar and workshops in livestock management so as to update and broaden their knowledge.
Agriculture is the art and science of systematic production of plants and animals for man's use through concerted human management. According to Adegbola and Komolafe (1985) agriculture occupies a strategic position in the social, economic and political development of a nation. A nation that cannot feed her citizens is not only weak but has no basis for continued existence. No wonder Sayarin (1826) said "Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are. The fate of nations depend upon how they are feed".
Tower (1994) defined Animal Science as the scientific study of the structure, breeding and management of livestock.
The term is most often used for domestic mammals raised for meat, meat production or dairy products (e.g cattle, swine, horses, goats, sheep). Livestock animals are kept under human control. They depend on him solely for food, shelter and protection (Midinyawa 2004).
During the 19th century, a research was made into animal production and much particular attention was paid to the reproduction, breeding, feeling and the care of animals (Sivia, 2009). Examples of such animals are: cattle (beef and diary) sheep goat. Buffalo, reindeer, pigs, poultry, rabbit. These animals are reared in large numbers in the world today, since after independence, successive governments have been aware and have made some efforts to find lasting solutions to problems confronting agricultural production especially the livestock industry in the country. Most of the efforts have been directed at formulating a number of policy measures to enhance agricultural development. These policies manifested in the series of agricultural programmes developed for the promotion of agricultural production, research, extension services and other agricultural, services.
The presents day objectives of animal domestication or livestock raising include the following stated by (Mijinyawa 2004).
As a source of food supply: Livestock products such as meat, milk, egg, blood and cheese and very rich in various nutrients required by man. They can either be cooked and eaten directly or processed into dairy products.
Raw materials: Hides skins, wool, fur, bones, feathers and hoots are raw material. For the manufacture of various items used by man which are being processed to leather, bag, shoes, belts, gloves, sandals, foot ball case and many other product's. They provide manure for crops and their droppings are also used to make some manural materials. Carcass, feathers and hoofs can be used when decayed as manure to enrich agricultural land. The faeces can also be used in the production of biogas and construction of granaries such as the rhumbu.
Animal bones are also used in the production of ceramics and in food production as mineral supplement.
Livestock can also serve as experimental animals by researchers and students of agriculture, biology and medicine.
They provide a source power: Animals such as the camels, horses and donkeys are used for the transportation of goods and persons from place to place while others such as the oxen provide draught power which can be utilized in various agricultural operations.
Religion and culture: In some parts of Northern Nigeria most house holds have livestock in their compounds to provide meat for the women, most of who are in "purdah" and cannot freely go to the market for their needs. In some communities, the keeping of a particular type of livestock animal may be done because it is used for rituals. The Buddha religions regards the cow as a sacred animal and as a result many families who practice Buddhism rear cattle in their home because of its sacredness. People of the Islamic faith slaughter animals especially the rain during their "id-El-kabir festival and the ram is raised mainly to meet the annual demand.
Even though the curriculum for secondary school agricultural education emphasized the management of at least one ruminant animal and one non-ruminant animal in each secondary school, this has not been practiced in some secondary school's in Ondo State.
This project is therefore designed to find out the strategies for establishing livestock farms in secondary school in Ondo State.
The general purpose of this study is to determine strategies for establishing livestock farms in secondary schools in Ondo States.
The result of this study will enhance the promotion of livestock in secondary schools in Ondo State by the following reasons.
a. It will enhance interest of teachers and students of agriculture in secondary schools in livestock production. And this will lead to full participation of the student and teachers in animal rearing.
For the purpose of clarity and avoidance of doubt the study "strategies for establishing livestock in secondary schools in Ondo State only focuses attention in how establish livestock farm in secondary schools within this particular area.
1. What are the things to be considered in establishing livestock farms?
2. What are the procedures needed for establishing livestock?
3. What are the system of livestock production?
4. What are the reasons for keeping livestock?
5. What are the activities needed in planning a livestock programme?
6. What are the facilities needed for livestock production?
7. What are the types of livestock that will be adaptable to the environment?
8. What are the personnel required for managing livestock factors?
9. What are the source of fund for secondary schools that wish to embark on livestock production?
10. What are the possible problems that can affect livestock production?
11. How do you control pests and diseases on the farm?


talkcontract | Greener and smarter?
Still digging out from an end of the year crush of emails, we came across new on a recent study done by green building consultant Jerry Yudelson. Despite advances in green building in the U.S., Europe is still leading the pack, according to the study. In it, Yudelson documents a range of green building practices that engineers and builders are employing overseas but have yet to catch on in the U.S.
Some European systems that have already made their way over to the U.S., Yudelson notes, include underfloor air distribution systems, building-integrated photovoltaic panels, and chilled beam technology for radiant cooling. With this in mind, the study "set out to discover what was happening 'over the horizon' and to profile a few of the more important mechanical and systems technology that mechanical contractors were likely to see showing up in U.S. projects, especially those with high-performance goals, such as LEED Gold or LEED platinum." The study, however, is not, its author notes, "a comprehensive view of European technology, but our best guess as to which technologies American and Canadian design engineers are likely to be using in the near future. The purpose of the study is both to give North American designers and contractors a 'heads up' about future technology changes and also to encourage them to go to Europe and see for themselves how these systems work."
2. Use of earth tubes for preheating/precooling outdoor air.
6. Chilled beams (to a limited extent in the right applications).
cogeneration/tri-generation systems with biomass fuel.
8. District cooling and heating to allow for more effective application of renewable energy towards a low-carbon approach.
10. Exterior active solar control systems, such as moveable shades and shutters.
Interested in reading more? The study can be downloaded as a whole here.
I work with a national research lab that performs extensive, research and R&D on several of the technologies you mention above. As our nations energy requirements and costs rise, I think will see a true adoption of new technologies, especially those based on renewable energy that reduce emissions and pollutants.


Diet food is nutrient rich meals and snacks that offer sufficient nutrition to the body without adding to calorie intake. Starving or trying fad diets can never provide far-fetched solutions for staying fit. Eating good food has to become a part of life to stay agile and beautiful all through the life. Besides good looks, here are some of the benefits diet food provides to the users.
Easily digestible food: If the food is digested easily, the colon cleaning does not remain an issue anymore. Easily digestible food is also essential for deriving its goodness at the earliest. Presence of less toxins in the body can surely cause improvement in health.
No more hunger pangs: Diet food is made of substances that make the user feel full. Rich in protein, they may be slow to digest, but are way more beneficial than refined wheat flour and its items. Refined carbs should be replaced with complex ones that are flushed out of the body easily and offer it more nutrition, ultimately good health.
More energy: Food that makes you feel sluggish is surely made of substances not good for body. The main function of food is to provide energy and not to eat it away. Diet food ensures that the person remains active and feels energetic which is very important for keeping the fats from piling up in the body, and also for working out sufficiently.
Good mental health: When you accomplish more in a day, you certainly stop stress from piling up. Achieving goals keep your morale high and you are not exposed to unnecessary worries. Diet food with its good features reflects in the form of a smiling face.